New mobile and/or wireless content services such as interactive gaming and music require an entirely new approach to billing and rating. With ‘always-on’ IP-based networks, telecommunications network operators (and like entities) need new and creative ways to market and price these services, as usage and volume-based pricing simply do not reflect the advances in the art and the ‘real’ value of data usage. Telecommunications network operators (and like entities) need to discriminate between gratis and chargeable content based on attributes including the content category, the wireless subscriber's class of service, time of day (among others). While the invention disclosed herewith addresses the impending and tangible needs of the state of the art to intermediate IP data flows (as Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) traffic for instance), we submit that much of the prior art remains lacking in this regard, and indeed, does not address prospective needs and contingencies as well.
For instance, U.S. patent application 20030200313 by Peterka et al., entitled Digital rights management system for clients with low level security, details a digital rights management system for determining whether clients are authorized to access content within a communication network, which in the preferred embodiment is implemented as a computer program product (but may be hardware based, or may be a combination of software and hardware). The invention of present seeking the protection of Letters Patent, provides additional layers of innovation as per the very intermediation of the HTTP traffic. The application by Peterka et al. remains basically a computer program product which such intermediation engines or similar products can query for approval and charging, whereas our invention of present, among other elements, is an integrated solution for both functions.
More analogous art and teachings may be gleaned from U.S. patent application 20020129088 by Zhou et al., entitled Content-based billing, details a method and apparatus for content-based billing including techniques for intercepting, modifying, and retransmitting a request between various entities engaged in content-based billing in the context of the World Wide Web. Principally though, said patent application remains tied to HTTP messaging, whereas our invention of present, also addresses other communication protocols including Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Furthermore, our invention seeking the protection of Letters Patent, provides for real-time interstitial screens, prompts, and menus for the purpose of confirming Age or the acceptance of Charges (among others). The application by Zhou et al. also simply assumes that the information pertaining to the storage of customer and content provider information is stored by the invention, whereas our invention allows for information to be stored by both internal and external databases. Zhou et al. also assumes that a given subscriber is either prepaid or post paid, whereas our invention of present employs a comprehensive rating engine which can characterize a given transaction as being associated with a pre-paid, post-paid, or a configurable billing concept (for instance, as having aspects of both pre-paid and postpaid or other billing concepts). Indeed, the nature of the billing paradigm is affect by a host of attributes including the source, destination, time of date, and location, among others. Furthermore, our invention can accrue a charge to some third party (e.g. a sponsor which subsidizes a portion or all of a service) in addition to allocating revenue to fourth part (e.g. the provider of the service).
REFERENCES CITED:U.S. patent applicationOctober 2003Peterka et al.709/22520030200313U.S. patent applicationSeptember 2002Zhou et al.709/20020020129088